Outreach: Public broadcasters adopting activist roleWhat stations are doing this year for families
and youth

Adapted
from an article published in Current, March 18, 1991

A few years ago, Sharon Griggins would have to explain "outreach"
every time she spoke up for the new formulation of public TV's
community role.

"Now it's in everyone's vocabulary, and even if they're not
doing it, they're thinking about doing it or know that they
should be doing it," says Griggins, who is the Seattle-based
western regional director of the Public Television Outreach
Alliance.

Here and there, public TV has always done what is now called
outreach, but now it's an established part of most stations'
agendas. In its sixth year, the outreach alliance is leading
a nationwide exploration of family and youth issues called All
Together Now.

Building on the Chemical People anti-drug project led by WQED,
Pittsburgh, eight years ago, the alliance has given "outreach"
a meaning in public TV and the community groups that are its
outreach allies.

Ricki Wertz, who pulled together the Chemical People project
and is now directing All Together Now, spiels off a series of
phrases that begin to define outreach: "the programming behind
the program ... extending the impact of the program...a call
to action that results from the broadcast ... we make something
happen."

The term seems to apply to any benevolent effort a station
undertakes in its community and any means to accomplish it.

In some ways, outreach resembles traditional promotion: the
target audience must be lured to the TV screen, even if word
of mouth is the only way to make contact  as Maryland
PTV discovered three years ago when it reached out to intravenous-drug
users at risk of contracting AIDS.

"I've always thought of outreach as a fountain of ideas," say
the alliance's western coordinator, Sharon Griggins, at KCTS,
Seattle. "People are taking our ideas and looking at what's
going on in their own communities and finding ways that linkages
can be made."

But is that a job for public broadcasters? Some doubt they
should wear the hat of a social worker or activist. Jim Lewis,
vice president and director of programming at KPTS, Wichita,
Kan., believes public broadcasters have no business dabbling
in advocacy, no matter how noble the cause.

"It is our job to provide information, not solutions," he says.
In the illiteracy problem, for instance, there are many possible
solutions. "Our charter does not give us the mandate to select
one solution over another," Lewis says.

But many more public broadcasters place outreach squarely within
their public-service mandate. "It seems to me, outreach is the
essence of public television," says Cherryale Burge, Maryland
PTV outreach director. "In Maryland, public television came
into existence to serve children in the classroom; the outreach
component is an extension of assisting kids through the stages
of development."

In effect, the station uses its prominence and its airwaves
to facilitate community action. "My job is to bring in the resources
from the community, to the community itself," says Ferne Barrow
of WETA, Washington, who is the alliance's eastern regional
outreach director.

The community results can be impressive, as in the case of
public TV's longest-running outreach effort, Project Literacy
U.S. (PLUS), a joint effort with Capital Cities/ABC. According
to the outreach alliance, PLUS and the 450 local task forces
it spawned helped increase the nation's pool of volunteers in
adult basic education by 109 percent between 1985 and 1988.

Stations also benefit by reaching out to community people.
"One bottom line is they will become viewers and take action,"
says Maryland PTV's Burge. "Another is that they will become
members and support public television with their dollars."

Outreach also maintains PTV's ties with state legislators,
says Burge. "With the beginnings of outreach, we've really galvanized
their willingness to listen to us and meet our financial needs.
It translates into money."

"We want to make the station more approachable, to have a friendlier
image," adds Cathee Clausen of WVPT, Harrisonburg, Va. She finds
too many people still think PTV is "for the elite."

Yet the practice of moving from one cause to another 
AIDS, the environment, literacy, drug abuse  may give
public TV the look of a do-gooding dilettante. To some outreach
workers, a year isn't long enough to have much effect. "We need
to sustain it much longer," says Burge. The "family" theme is
broad enough to let stations continue their literacy, anti-drug
projects under its banner, she observes.

"Every station is doing something around kids and family,"
says Wertz. "`We left it very generic so we could bring in whatever
they're doing. Things that would fit in Philadelphia would not
fit Albuquerque or Utah."

National programs provide a skeleton of issues to be raised,
progressing from at-risk children (Bill Moyers' documentary
"All Our Children," to be aired April 10) to "regular kids doing
remarkable things" ("Cool Moves  Teens Together," airing
May 1) to child nutrition (the Children in Poverty series
later this year) and comparative childhoods worldwide (Childhood,
a six-part series coming in the fall).

"Initially we were looking at doing the elderly, but after
the great success of the environment, we feared it would be
difficult to sustain a year-long campaign with the elderly,"
says Angie Krusenklaus, regional outreach coordinator for the
South. "We looked at the pipeline from PBS and saw lots of good
programs coming about the family, so the theme grew from the
elderly into the whole family."

As in previous years, stations can choose from the alliance's
toolkit of proven activities such as organizing contests, sponsoring
charity footraces and publishing civic directories.

Some stations, particularly smaller ones, adopt these "turnkey"
projects planned by the alliance. Yet the implementation, and
the results, are strictly localized. When a station in a small
rural city asked students to conceive a public service ad campaign,
many touted environmentalism or even "obeying rules." But in
Pittsburgh, most of the entries focused on child abuse.

Less common are the stations that invent big campaigns on their
own, such as Project Crossroads, a major effort by KERA, Dallas,
to improve race relations in its region.

The scale and vigor depend in large part on the degree of commitment
by station leaders. "Once you have top management behind the
project, obviously more resources and more people and time are
put into the project," Krusenklaus observes.

A
sampling of
outreach projects

Maryland
PTV: Volunteer drive

If valuable and quantifiable results are an objective, volunteer
recruitment drives are one of the most successful outreach activities.
Last year's Project Reach Out telethon, aired by Maryland PTV
and Baltimore commercial station WJZ, netted more than 200,000
hours of volunteer time statewide  actual hours of work,
not pledged hours. The statewide telethon doubled its 1989 results,
says Cherryvale Burge, the state network's outreach director.
The third annual Project Reach Out will be held in September.

During the two-hour entertainment telethon, viewers called
an 800 number and described their skills and credentials, explains
Burge. The information was given to state Department of Education
workers, who matched up volunteers with the needs of nearby
schools for tutors, chaperones, teachers' aides and mentors.

In keeping with the alliance's family theme, Maryland PTV is
preparing a documentary on foster care that aims to show potential
foster parents that they could take that responsibility and
enjoy it, says Burge.

Other outreach projects span the family topic: a documentary,
"Black Men: Uncertain Futures," which aired nationally in February,
gave viewers a look at positive achievements by black men; a
quiz to assess how much parents know about parenting; coverage
of the state geography bee and the Maryland's Kids convention;
and "Too Young to Parent," a teen-pregnancy documentary repeated
from last year;

WVPT:
Hiring mascot

Like many small stations, WVPT, Harrisonburg, in Virginia's
Shenandoah Valley, considered, culled and adopted ideas from
the outreach alliance.

The station is participating in a local and national storyboard
competition in which secondary-school students plan short video
spots telling "How I Can Change the World," says Cathee Clausen,
WVPT public relations coordinator. The station has produced
and will air three winning entries. The national competition
is co-sponsored by the outreach alliance and CPB.

The station adopted another alliance suggestion to hold a Youth
Recognition Week. Ten outstanding young people were selected
last week to be profiled on-air May 13-17.

Clausen has also been casting to fill a new job: station mascot.
To counter an onslaught of Ninja Turtles, WVPT plans to promote
its children's programs including Reading Rainbow with
personal appearances by an overheated person in a bear suit.
She recently chose an especially cuddly-looking bear suit among
10 found in catalogues.

KET:
Kids behind camera

Kentucky ETV added a new twist to the local outreach production.
High school students will direct and produce Totally Radical
Teenage Videos, an adolescent's perspective on a host of
family issues.

Among the five high school classes working on the production
are students from the Kentucky School for the Deaf in Danville,
says Marianne Mosely, promotion and outreach manager at KET.
Student-produced segments on family topics will be interspersed
with "student on the street" interviews and a panel discussion
among Lexington high school students, Mosely says.

The network has assigned a director, producer and associate
producer to blend the three segments into the Totally Radical
hour-long program that will follow the national outreach documentary
"Cool Moves  Teens Together."

KPBS:
Targets dropouts

The San Diego station recently launched the Challenge of Diversity,
a long-term outreach project to promote intercultural understanding.

KPBS also has adapted the family theme to the problems of high
school dropouts. "We tied it in with the family because most
of the dropouts get no support from anyone, including their
families," says Patricia Finn, advertising and promotion director
for KPBS.

The station's half-hour documentary, "Before It's Too
Late," allows dropouts to tell their own stories, encouraging
students to stay in school. County officials joined a round
table discussion on the problem of dropouts, and targeted educational
and parents groups with mailings and posters paid for by health-care
provider Kaiser Permanente. The program was screened at a parents
meeting of the San Diego Unified School District.

The network has challenged Arkansas families to submit their
versions of everyday family life in videos of approximately
two minutes length.

"We're interested in a view of what the family is here in Arkansas,"
Bartos says. The network will award makers of the top 10 entries
and broadcast the winning videos later this year.

WMFE:
Testing parents

The Orlando station is co-producing the "National Parent Quiz"
with Oregon Public Broadcasting. The hour-long program, slated
for a national feed next fall, marks the final year of "Crackdown,"
a three-year project on drug abuse prevention in Florida.

The quiz audience is expected to extend beyond parents to all
care-givers, such as older siblings, daycare workers and grandparents,
who look after children between the ages of six and 12, according
to project coordinator Terry Fife.

The quiz is "a combination of vignettes of child-parent situations
and discussions by experts," says WMFE Director of Promotion
Barbara Gibson.

WUFT:
Valentines to troops

The Gainesville, Fla., station kicked off 1991 by inviting
families to record video greetings to relatives in the military
overseas. Approximately 20 families taped video valentines,
says Station Manager Lynn Ganz.

WUFT also is marking the year of the family with locally produced
specials on topics such as minorities, single parents and foster
care, Ganz says. The station is putting together a resource
brochure on families that will be offered to the community around
the April air date of the centerpiece outreach documentary "Cool
Moves  Teens Together."

KOCE:
Open house

As part of a Backstage at KOCE project, the Huntington Beach,
Calif., station invites representatives from different community,
ethnic and interest groups to the station for an introductory
program four to six times a year.

About 50 participants meet at KOCE for an evening including
a reception, station tour, light supper and a welcome by station
officials. A volunteer also speaks and some programs are previewed.
"It's good, all-around acquaintanceship" says KOCE's outreach
coordinator Pat Adams. "Basically, it's an awareness group,
strictly based on the community."

In preparation for Black History Month, black leaders from
the Orange County area visited the station. Asian-American groups
have been to the station recently, and a group of Hispanics
will soon be invited.

"It is not mass marketing," says Adams. "It's really one-by-one,
grass-roots marketing, leading people by the hand into the station,"
she adds.

KOCE also participates in national outreach themes by setting
up county-wide progams, inviting state legislators, regional
decision-makers, community groups and educators to attend teleconferences
and discussions on the topics.

KCTS:
Creative kids

KCTS in Seattle sponsors a yearly public service announcement
competition for middle and high school students. Entrants draw
storyboards for spots based on the year's outreach issue, and
winners take part in their production.

Plans for the station's fall project include a series on child
development, to be coordinated with seminars conducted by a
local health co-op at its clinics and at KCTS following each
segment.

Prairie
PTV: Town meetings

Using a town meeting format, Prairie PTV in North Dakota offers
its resources as a forum for social change.

"Program promotion often masquerades as outreach, but there
is no way a program can affect social change by itself," says
Tom Rendon, promotion/community relations manager for the network.
"The key is to bring together local organizations working on
the issues."

This year the network organized four statewide "town meetings"
that combined special reports, a panel of experts and audience
participation. The topics were: waste management, school consolidation,
economic development and human services.

"We also provide a viewers guide on the issues to our members,
business leaders, the legislature and interested organizations.
Our job is to create interest in a topic," he adds.

Iowa
PTV: Reaching teens

"We are using live programming with panel discussions and call-in
segments to involve our citizens in this year's campaign," says
Duane Huey, Iowa PTV's executive producer of special projects.
"America losing a generation of children is our thrust. We want
to give voice to the Iowan perspective."

The network also produces special teen-oriented discussion
programs and reports directed at secondary-school students during
school lunch hour. Students at selected schools are encouraged
to call in questions and comments on topics such as drug abuse,
latch-key kids, teenage pregnancy and the Gulf War.

One production for the high school audience will address the
issues raised by South Carolina ETV's teleconference "Making
the American Dream Work for Our Children: A New Vision of School
Guidance."

WMVS:
Family talk

Family activities, picnics, Vacation Video Magazine
and special inserts directed at children headline the outreach
campaign at WMVS-TV, Milwaukee.

"We want to improve family communication by involving the whole
family in our projects. Right now we are looking for underwriting
to sponsor a summer kick-off picnic that will preview our summer
programming for children," says Tania Jones, community outreach
coordinator for the station.

WMVS produced its own supplement to Vacation Video Magazine,
a children's publication from KQED, San Francisco, that contains
scheduling information, local activities, games and articles
that highlight outreach themes for 1991.

"We produced our own insert that encourages kids to join our
Action Kids club, which promotes family use of public television
and the library," she adds.

Nebraska:
Ground water festival

The state network participated in a state ground water festival
as an outreach project this year.

Students from 48 schools and the Nebraska governor attended
the fair, where on-air personalities conducted games with a
water theme.

"We're an agricultural state, and water is important," says
Katherine Stephens, information director for Nebraska ETV. "We
think it is important to educate our children about this valuable
resource."

Nebraska ETV also produced a documentary that follows three
inner-city youths, part of a group of 24, who worked on Nebraska
farms as part of an exchange project.

WTVS:
More than a station

Cooperating with commercial radio and TV stations, WTVS, Detroit,
has established long-running community development programs.

"We can't change our focus every year," says Agnes Scott, v.p.
of special projects. "Most of our community development projects
have been running for years."

Yearly activities against teenage substance abuse include organizing
a leadership workshop for 1,000 students from 100 high schools
in the viewing area and a rally that attracted as many as 4,000.

"Community development implies more than just getting information
out about programming. We think of ourselves as more than a
broadcast station and less than a social agency," Scott says.
"We make other people more effective by bringing them together."

"We see ourselves as part of the larger community. Our projects
serve as conveners and coalition-builders," she adds.

NPR:
"Prejudice Puzzle"

Public radio also has developed outreach projects. As part
of last fall's Specials Project, NPR provided teachers' guides,
outreach handbooks and media kits for stations carrying Class
of 2000: The Prejudice Puzzle. NPR is repeating the effort
April 1-6 for Class of 2000: Family Stories.

A series of reports aired during one week on All Things
Considered, Morning Edition and Weekend Edition were
one part of The Prejudice Puzzle, NPR's largest national
outreach effort so far. More than 215 stations  a substantial
80 percent of NPR outlets  carried a two-hour call-in
program hosted by Scott Simon on the Saturday following the
reports.

NPR also surveyed stations and analyzed station managers' reactions
to the local and national outreach efforts.

Such stations as WFAE-FM in Charlotte, N.C., WXPN-FM in Philadelphia
and WYSO in Yellow Springs, Ohio, ran local essay competitions.

More than 50 national, state and local organizations, ranging
from the Boys Clubs and the National Education Association to
the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and the Indian Youth
of America helped publicize the project and assisted NPR in
outreach activities.

An American Public Radio program may also adopt the outreach
approach. Producers of APR's Presidential Choices program,
recently funded by CPB, are considering involving schools in
an outreach effort, says network spokeswoman Deb Wolfer.

Web
page posted Nov. 4, 2000
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